By Alex Russell with Tim Falconer | Coming from Wiley in 2012
Today’s child is the safest in history. Streetproofing, bike helmets, fire-retardant pajamas and helicopter parents mean a kid really needs to work hard to get seriously hurt. And yet, today’s parents are more anxious, guilt-ridden and fearful than ever.
Children once “grew up,” now we “raise” them. The irony is that modern, obligated parents, working so hard to nurture emotionally healthy children, are raising kids who are delayed in their emotional development because they have been given too much and protected too often. Kids need to be scraped up a bit and bumped around by life. They need to be worried at times, bored at others, they need to get a bit hurt, even emotionally hurt—all within manageable limits of course. These experiences help them develop resilience and a healthy respect for reality.
While offering more suggestions to people who are already overwhelmed with advice seems paradoxical, or worse, Here We Are Now, Entertain Us: Parenting in the Age of Entitlement will provide the perspective to escape the current obsession with strategies and techniques and return to “minding” children.
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